


90. stars make no noise

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [314]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 05:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10870404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Tomorrow. Another restaurant, another few hours in the truck, another hundred miles further away from home. They could keep going like this forever, and Sarah has absolutely no idea how that makes her feel.





	90. stars make no noise

This far out of the city the stars stab into Sarah’s tongue like knives, cold and sharp. She sits in the truckbed and tries to make constellations, fails miserably. Everything just looks like a mistake she’s already made, or is going to make, or otherwise looks like a cup because she at least vaguely knows the Big Dipper. Guilt is a hot sick sea in her stomach. They should turn around, except she isn’t going to turn the truck around. She listens to Helena sigh in her sleep, roll over as she dreams.

(Helena had been fine with sleeping in the truckbed.)

(Sarah hadn’t pushed her on it.)

(Sarah should be in the truck right now, sleeping across both seats and the hump in the middle, but she climbed into the truckbed wrapped in a blanket and now she’s watching the stars.)

_Wake up_ , she wants to say. She doesn’t say it. If she got in the truck right now, turned it on, turned them around and drove home – Helena might not even wake up. Even if she did she probably wouldn’t question it, except to ask if there’ll be breakfast. She was the right person to bring. Questions, Sarah doesn’t want. Consequences either.

She looks down and at Helena, asleep under the starlight. The faint light is kinder to her, Sarah’s sister: you can’t see the bags under her eyes, and her hair looks softer than it does in daylight. She looks like something you could hold. Sarah puts a hand on Helena’s shoulder, feels the boniness of it, is sharply – guiltily – satisfied. She takes her hand back again, pulls the blanket closer around herself. God, it’s cold. Not that the truck is warmer, but it’s easier to pretend when she’s inside.

Helena sighs again, and stretches – one long motion that tenses her whole body. Her eyes open, sleepy in the dark. “Hello, _sestra_ ,” she croaks. “Is trouble?”

“No,” Sarah says. She should tell Helena to go back to sleep; she doesn’t. Helena sits up and rubs sleepily at her eyes. Sarah bites the inside of her lip, holds the blanket open so that Helena can scoot closer and wrap it around herself. She is bitterly cold and clings to Sarah like a burr. Sarah keeps looking up.

“I dreamed about you,” Helena says, like it isn’t a big deal.

“Oh yeah?” Sarah says.

“Mhm,” Helena says. She doesn’t clarify further. Sarah only dreamed about Helena during the time she thought Helena was dead, and those were all nightmares. She doesn’t say that; instead she shifts closer to Helena and leans on her a little bit.

Helena sighs, rests her head on Sarah’s shoulder. _Cold_. She doesn’t ask questions, like: where are we going, or: why did we run, or: why are you out here with me in the dark. Helena is good at not asking questions. She was the right person to bring along, because she won’t ask questions, because Sarah doesn’t want her to ask questions.

“What do you dream about,” Helena says.

Kira. But Sarah can’t say that.

“Stupid shit,” she says. “I’m always running late. Just running and runnin’ and I never get there.” Under the stars the words sound like they mean something, but Sarah can’t find a way to say that they don’t. They’re just dreams. They don’t have to mean shit, if Sarah doesn’t want them to.

Helena’s hand settles loosely around her wrist and she squeezes, once, but then does not let go. Her fingers are barely there, but they are a cage around Sarah’s bones. Sarah can hear her breathing, can feel it just slightly against the edge of her shirt.

“Do you know any constellations,” she says – realizes Helena probably doesn’t know what that means – says: “Star pictures.”

“No,” Helena says drowsily. “Do you?”

“No,” Sarah says. She looks back up. “Thought it might be nice, if we knew.”

“We can look tomorrow,” Helena says, words slurring and stumbling down the hill to sleep. “On your phone. Or we can ask somebody.”

Tomorrow. Another restaurant, another few hours in the truck, another hundred miles further away from home. They could keep going like this forever, and Sarah has absolutely no idea how that makes her feel. She could grow to love Helena, if they kept going on like this. Helena dreams about her. Helena puts her head on Sarah’s shoulder. Helena doesn’t ask any questions, doesn’t even look at her strange. It would be a relief, if Sarah loved Helena half as much as Helena loves her.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “sure. Tomorrow.”

“Or we can make our own,” Helena says.

Sarah swallows. “Or we can make our own,” she echoes.

Helena lifts her head off of Sarah’s shoulder, with visible effort. She tilts her head back and watches the sky. “That one is you,” she says, tracing lines between stars Sarah can’t recognize from her different angle. “That one is me.”

“We’re there,” Sarah says.

“Mhm.”

“Can you do something for me?” Helena is already nodding before Sarah has finished the sentence. “Can you remember where they are, meathead? Where we are. Up there.”

“Yes,” Helena says. She traces shapes again with her finger, like she’s committing it to memory. The sight is weirdly comforting; so is the knowledge that they’re there, Helena and Sarah, even after the two of them drive away.

“Thanks,” Sarah says, and she lies down on the truckbed. Helena follows, so as not to lose the blanket. The truckbed is cold, metal, terrible in every way; she doesn’t know why Helena hasn’t complained, except she does.

“’m gonna stay out here with you,” Sarah says. “If that’s alright.”

“It is alright,” Helena says. Sarah can’t see where Helena is, with her eyes closed, but that’s a comfort: Helena’s voice floats in the dark, coming from everywhere. “Sweet dreams, _sestra_ ,” Helena says. “I hope you find whatever you are running to.”

That means something, Sarah’s sure it does, but it’s too late: before she can ask Helena what it means, she’s already fast asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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